Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates generally to network function virtualization and, more particularly, to systems and methods of establishing service function chaining in multiple domains.
Description of the Related Art
Emerging network applications, such as cloud and big data, may involve joint consideration of IT resources residing within multiple domains within one or more data centers (DCs). Network function virtualization (NFV) can be used to virtualize network functions and migrate them from devices that are built for a single, specific purpose to multi-purpose virtual machines, which may reduce service deployment costs and improve service flexibility. As more service functions move to virtual machines in geographically distributed data centers and as more individually-managed Networks-on-Demand are enabled by software defined networking (SDN) technology, end-to-end network services may implement various mechanisms to coordinate resources across multi-network domains. For example, a network service may traverse one or more consumer broadband networks, mobile backhaul networks, mobile packet core networks, and/or virtual private networks.
Service functions (SFs) can be deployed in various networks. SFs can provide a range of features such as security, server load balancing, and wide area network acceleration, and SFs can be instantiated at various points in a network infrastructure. Service function (SF) deployments have been relatively static and/or bound to a network topology, as in the past, SF deployments do not adapt well to elastic service environments enabled by virtualization for instance. However, data center networks and/or cloud architectures require more flexible SR deployments. Moreover, transitions to virtual platforms can require agile service insertion models that can support dynamic and/or elastic service delivery. Further, SFs can require an ability to easily steer traffic to requisite services.